The home that love built

Briar took a step back from the bed of furs she had been assembling in the corner of their room near the fireplace, checking and admiring her work. She had learned a couple of things about what was comfortable and convenient for sleeping with and feeing their newborns the first time around so that helped her greatly with her preparations this time. The bed was more flat across this time, finding a larger fur to cover the surface so wiggly pups couldn't try to hide under overlapped furs, and she made it less tall this time so a little pup couldn't go rolling off the edge. Instead of piling more furs to make it as plush, she opted to make a mattress of sorts with a large, wide pillow fulled with wool from their alpacas so she didn't have to sacrifice the plushness of her bed to make it more low profile. Of course the short barriers around the edges of the bed were back, pulled out from storage to enclose the large bed and just make doubly sure that their pups in their first few weeks as blind, squirming little loaves wouldn't go wiggling their way toward the fire.

Briar made a content sigh and settled back onto her haunches with a little smile as she looked around at their currently empty bedroom. The time between when their first litter was born and when they began preparing their room for their pups to come was even more short than she had originally thought it would be, but with the way she and Artorias were always eager to be all over one another it wasn't really all that much of a surprise. There was a large pile of furs to one side of the room that had been the beds for their first litter as they out grew sleeping with their parents and their original puppy bed. She had considered putting the furs away for now, but before she could she had realized she was once again pregnant and with how quickly pups grew it felt silly to put them away only to have to pull them back out in a month or two. For now they were just neatly stacked on one side of their large bedroom and covered with a cloth to keep them from getting dusty.

Now that the task she had wanted to get done today was finished, Briar decided she might as well finish getting ready for the day so that she could go down and get some lunch together for everyone. It was still fairly early in the day, perhaps a few hours before mid-day, but it did take her longer to get through her usual morning routine now that she was working around her quickly growing belly. It was still a little too early to tell just how many pups they would be welcoming this time around, but Gwyn seemed to think they should be expecting a pretty large litter yet again. She was already beginning to waddle a bit with each step and curling around to comb her long tail was a bit of a struggle. It was all minor inconveniences though in the grand scheme of things and considering the wonderful gift they were given at the end of it all it was more than worth it. Settling down on a fur that was spread in front of a long mirror that was propped against the wall, she picked up her comb and started working through a couple of tangles toward the end that was easy to reach, through the further up she got toward the base of her tail the more troublesome it became. It did make her long for the days when Lia would come to help her with her tail in the mornings, but she usually managed well enough on her own.

"Artorias & Briar Carpathius"